


No Time Left to Waste

by In_agony_and_ecstasy



Series: A New Beginning [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: After Armageddon't, Canon Compliant, Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 10:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19990963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_agony_and_ecstasy/pseuds/In_agony_and_ecstasy
Summary: Aziraphale has finally caught up.(AKA Aziraphale’s belated acceptance to stay at Crowley’s place, after the switch and after everything is returned to normal.)





	No Time Left to Waste

**Author's Note:**

> Though I know the book and the mini series don't divert much, this fic follows the series more closely than the book. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Crowley’s flat was darker and sparser than my bookshop. He owned few possessions, all of which were expensive or priceless in some way, though I knew their value to him was purely sentimental. No different, in that way, than my bookshop was to me. What surprised me, the first time I stepped foot there, and still surprised me, was the only room with natural light. He’d filled it with lush green plants, big and small, all very finicky but nonetheless flourishing. I stood in that room currently, smiling. He couldn’t see me. He was passing through the hall behind the doorway I stood in.

“I don’t know about you,” he said now, “But after all that nonsense, I could use some shut-eye.”

I turned around then, just in time to watch his slight frame disappear into another room. His bedroom, I figured. 

“I haven’t actually slept in many years,” I said then. The activity was a waste to me. I always had something else I could be doing. Reading, eating, what have you. Now more than ever, I didn’t want to sleep. Because now, I understood how humans must have felt all the time. At any moment, my time could be up. Or worse, Crowley’s time. And one day, the world _would_ end. It had to. Nothing lasted forever. Not like I thought. Not like I so foolishly took for granted. 

“Oh?” Crowley said from the other room, “I’ve slept for years at a time.”

I smiled again, sadly this time. Crowley deserved more to look forward to.

“What shall I do while you sleep?” I called to him. 

He stepped out into the hall again. He leaned against the wall like he couldn’t be bothered to hold himself up straight. He’d changed into pajamas. Luxurious black silk pants and button-down shirt, which was indeed, buttoned down to the fourth button. His pupils widened in the dim hall. I’d never seen him like this. I averted my eyes. 

“Whatever you like,” he gestured in a vague way toward the rest of his apartment. “I must warn you though. I don’t have any books and I don’t keep food in the house.”

I let out a shaky breath. “Goodness, Crowley. What do you do?”

“Sleep. Tempt. Watch TV. Wait to see you again.” He shrugged. Something fluttered in my stomach.

“That’s all?”

He nodded. “More or less. Oh. And water the plants.”

I glanced at the plants again. “They really are quite lovely, Crowley.”

Abruptly, he slithered up beside me and hissed in my ear. “Don’t! They’ll hear you and let it go to their heads.”

I blinked at him, in an attempt to seem unamused. Though in reality, it was very difficult not to smile.

“If you say so,” I said. 

Crowley slinked away then, back toward his room. “Goodnight, Angel.” He waved half-heartedly.

“Crowley,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder at me, waiting. I struggled to think of something to say. The only reason I said his name was because – because why? Some instinctual urge to stop him from ending the night together so soon. We’d never spent a whole night in each other’s company before. At least not, while one of us slept. That bordered too closely on human domesticity for me. And he knew it. 

“What if I wanted to sleep too?” I asked then. 

He raised his eyebrows and glanced around his flat. “I don’t have two beds. There’s a chair. It’s not very comfortable. There’s a couch. Equally uncomfortable no matter how sleek it looks. S’pose you could miracle up a bed of your own if you like. And something to sleep in.”

“Right then,” I said. “Jolly – jolly good.”

He nodded at me. Then he hesitated for a moment. I held my breath in anticipation. 

But nothing came of it. 

“Goodnight. Angel.”

He shut the door behind him. 

Several minutes passed before I even moved. Then I paced in the hallway. I didn’t want to be away from him, even if we were only rooms apart. 

And if I was honest with myself, I knew why. It wasn’t as though, after all that had happened, after all that had _almost_ happened, that I didn’t finally understand. Rather – understand wasn’t the word. I’d understood since giving Crowley the holy water all those years ago that I loved him. That I loved him in ways an Angel shouldn’t be able to. That I loved him the way humans loved each other. The way, humans _romantically_ loved one another. 

Rather, what I meant was, it wasn’t as though I was still in denial. 

I loved him. I loved him devoutly. I loved him sacrilegiously. 

Until Armageddon – Almost Armageddon – I had weighed my love for Crowley and my devotion to the Almighty and heaven and found them equal. 

Crowley, on the other hand, had long ago forsaken his commitment to hell. Maybe, I considered now, Crowley had never truly given himself over to hell. He had, after all, never intended to fall and most likely never had any desire to be a demon. But whether he had forsaken it or never truly committed in the first place, he’d made it clear that he had done so on my behalf. The holy water wasn’t a suicide pill. It was protection against the consequences he knew he’d one day face for choosing to rescue an angel over and over again. He was preparing to choose me over hell for eternity if he had to. And at the very same moment I was providing him with the means to do that, I told him not to wait up for me. I even implied when I wasn’t even certain, that one day…I might catch up to him, but that I was so far behind he might as well not even bother. I had led him on.

In the more recent years he’d seemed in my eyes ever more resentful of his title and yet all the more persistent to abide by it. At first I didn’t understand why. He couldn’t even stand to hear me poke fun at his kind nature anymore. When I had, he pinned me against a wall and snarled at me. But if he hadn’t done that, I would have never understood: He was already sore, and calling him nice was like rubbing salt in his wounds. I had turned him down because he was a demon, and then had the nerve to call him nice. I had all but rubbed it in his face that no matter how good he was capable of being, he’d always be a demon and never enough. 

I wouldn’t ever forgive myself for hurting him that day. 

I stopped pacing and stared at Crowley’s closed bedroom door. Waved a hand over myself, miracling away my pantsuit and replacing it with beige-and-blue flannel pajama pants and a button-down shirt. 

Maybe, I reasoned, I couldn’t be forgiven, but maybe…I could make it up to him? I had turned Heaven away after all. I had refused to fight in their war. I had attempted to kill the antichrist. And I had chosen Crowley’s side, _our_ side. Though I had done all this without comprehending its significance in the moment, I had also done so without hesitation. 

We had dined at the Ritz. I was ready to have that picnic. I had finally, _finally_ caught up. 

With trembling hands, I approached Crowley’s bedroom door and opened it. He didn’t look up from where he lay on his side, black velvet comforter pulled over his shoulder, one arm tucked under his pillow, and his face as calm as I’d ever seen it. For a long moment I just stood there, feeling somewhat ashamed, like some kind of peeping Tom. But I couldn’t help myself. This was all so foreign to me. To us. 

I tip-toed toward the unoccupied half of his queen bed and pulled the blanket down. Crawling in beside him, I pulled the blanket over myself up to my waist. Crowley stirred. His eyes opened and he jolted over to face me.

“Angel? What are you –”

“It’s what humans do,” I blurted. “Share a bed.”

His alarmed expression softened. “Yeah, but - Only with certain people.”

I went to sit up. “Should I go?”

“No! I mean – No, you can stay. If that’s what you want.”

I smiled at him and eased back under the covers. He settled in too, still facing me. His pupils were wide, flitting all over the place faster than my own could ever hope to keep up with. He blinked after a long quiet moment passed. I swallowed, and reached for him, cupping one side of his face in my hand. 

“Angel?” he breathed.

“Years ago I told you not to wait up for me because you went too fast.”

He furrowed his brows, and placed his hand over mine where it rested. His thumb stroked my wrist.

“But you did anyway,” I continued, with some difficulty. My throat felt like it was constricting. “And I think I’ve finally caught up.”

“Y-You have?”

I pressed my lips together and nodded. “Mm- _hm_.”

Then, as if approaching an animal I didn’t want to startle, I began to lean into him. Once he realized what I was doing, he couldn’t wait. In one swift motion, his arm slid around my waist, pulling me toward him, pressing my chest against his and holding me in a vice grip. At the same moment, he tilted his head forward to shrink the distance between us and pressed his lips against mine. 

Oh, his lips met mine and I exhaled into him and he groaned into it, hugging me tighter, kissing me deeper – and I felt mortal, I felt old. He made me weak. Vulnerable. And at the same time, safe – out of reach from all harm, because it was him. Time passed and I sensed it passing, which had never happened before. But it was there – time dripping through my fingers. I could not relive these seconds. I could not go back and kiss him on the wall of Eden, so that I might never miss out on this for 6,000 years, as if time, immortal or not, wasn’t the most valuable, finite resource in the universe. For the first time I understood what it meant to live forever and what it meant to die. Living forever meant that I had the time to make up for the time I wasted. But I might not live forever. Which meant – we could never take our time again. I knew that now. 

When our lips parted he pressed his forehead to mine, refusing to leave more than an inch or two of space between us. For how long, I didn’t know, we calmed our breathing and held one another. He let go of my waist so that he could trail his knuckles down the length of my neck and chest. His eyes roamed over me while he did so. He wore the softest expression. 

“Don’t think after something like that I’ll be able to sleep,” he muttered. 

I couldn’t help but beam. “Something like that?”

He nodded. “From you. After all this time.”

“Too long.”

He huffed. Smiled, gently. “Too long doesn’t even cover it. Any length of time would be too long. But the whole time? It’s been Hell, let me tell you.”

I opened my mouth to speak and couldn’t. What I wanted to say, I didn’t have the words for. Nothing could convey how sorry I felt for what I’d put him through. I could only imagine, that the guilt I felt now was the worst guilt I was capable of feeling. Worse than if I had fallen just like him, in the beginning. And the hurt that resided within me now was the worst I’d ever felt, but more than that, every time I thought it couldn’t hurt more, it did the second I remembered that this was how he’d felt all along. _This_ was how I’d made him feel. I averted my eyes, and placed my hands against his chest, about to push away. 

He wedged one arm underneath my neck and the other back around my waist, cradling me close, not letting me go. 

I could feel his lips move against my forehead when he spoke. 

“Hey. It’s been worth it, you know? You think I just like torturing myself? No. It’s always worth it.”

“I’ve wasted so much t-time,” I said, and my voice cracked. 

He shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me? I wouldn’t have had it any other way. There’s nothing I would do differently.”

I tilted my head up to face him. “Nothing?”

“ _Nothing_.”

“Then – If that’s true – then why all the…?”

He arched an eyebrow. “The?"

“The _fuss_ , Crowley? The – _efforts_?”

He slid the arm around my waist out and placed that hand gently on my cheek. “All I’ve ever wanted, is to hear from you, that we were on the same page. The same side, so to speak. That I wasn’t in it alone. Because – if we weren’t, and you said so, I could – I could back off. I could stop…making efforts. But you – you – I didn’t think I was in it alone. And if I wasn’t – I just wanted it out in the open.”

I swallowed, with some effort. “You were never alone, Crowley.”

He gave me a crooked smile. “That’s all I wanted to hear. Well – _needed_ to hear. There’s much more I might _want_ to hear.”

I blushed then and covered my face.

He snickered. “Too fast?”

“At least give me a warning when you’re – you’re about to tempt me next time!”

His head jerked back and his expression turned quizzical. “Tempt you? Is that what you thought –”

I cut him off with another kiss, and he didn’t resist me in the slightest. In fact, his lips were just as inviting as the first time. As if they’d been anxiously awaiting mine’s arrival. 

When I pulled away, I breathed, “Be careful, dear boy, or I might just overstay my welcome.”

He threw his head back and cackled. “After 6,000 years of invitations? As if you ever _could_ ,” he scoffed, and kissed me again. 

I could get used to this, I thought, deepening the kiss. I could very well make this routine, if I dared say.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious, my tumblr URL is oryx-and-thickney@tumblr.com!


End file.
